Rep. Elizabeth Esty apologized Thursday and said she “failed to protect” a former female staffer from domestic violence — at the hand of Esty’s since-fired chief of staff, who the Democrat helped get a job at Sandy Hook Promise.

The three-term incumbent from Cheshire, who has publicly championed #MeToo legislation for Congress, told The Courant Thursday night that she deeply regrets her handling of misconduct by her former top adviser, Tony Baker.

Esty said she should have suspended Baker immediately upon learning of the disturbing allegations against him in May 2016, including him punching the former staffer and threatening to kill her.

But the congresswoman allowed him to remain in his $136,000 annual post for nearly three months while her office conducted an internal investigation and then paid Baker a $5,000 severance payment.

“I am heartsick that she has been hurt in this and that others on my staff have as well,” Esty said. “I wish I could rewrite the past and not have this ever happen. I’m trying to do better. I’m not perfect.”

Esty was responding to published reports in the Washington Post and Hearst Connecticut Media, which obtained an affidavit for a protective order filed by the former staffer. The Post identified the victim as Anna Kain, who had dated Baker.

Esty told The Courant she reimbursed the U.S. Treasury with a personal check for $5,000 to cover Baker’s severance payment.

In the fall of 2016, the gun control group Sandy Hook Promise called Esty to check the references of Baker for an advocacy job in the critical bellwether state of Ohio.

“This was a mistake, I think,” Esty said. “I’m somebody who believes in second chances. I was principally trying to get him away from my staff and the one he had hurt and make a safe space in Washington.”

The state’s top Republican, party Chairman J.R. Romano, called for Esty to step down.

“She wrote [Baker] a glowing recommendation and helped him get another job after he was known to be abusive,” Romano said. “The Democratic Party in this state needs to join me in calling for Elizabeth Esty to resign.”

Efforts to reach Baker, who served as Esty’s chief of staff for three-and-a-half years, were unsuccessful.

A request for comment was left for Nicole Hockley, the managing director of Sandy Hook Promise, who lost her son, Dylan, in the 2012 school shooting.

Esty, who has represented the 5th District since 2013 and is up for re-election in November, said she has no plans to resign.

“I was not the perpetrator of this,” Esty said. “I think there’s a whole record of what I’ve accomplished.”

Esty’s district extends from Danbury and Litchfield County to the Farmington Valley and New Britain. It had already been targeted by national Republicans because of Donald Trump’s strong showing there in 2016.

“This abhorrent behavior should be punished, not rewarded with cash payouts and glowing recommendations,” said Chris Martin, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Fellow members of Connecticut’s all-Democrat congressional delegation were silent Thursday night on the unfolding controversy.

Christina Polizzi, a spokeswoman for the Connecticut Democrats, said Romano was trying to score political points.

“Congresswoman Esty said it best herself, she knows firsthand that we need stronger workplace protections,” Polizzi said. “The congresswoman is a strong advocate for women. As she has said - she wishes she had done things differently. But she has made important changes on this issue both in her office and in Congress.”

In an extensive interview with The Courant, a contrite Esty recounted the sequence of events surrounding Baker’s dismissal as her chief of staff.

It was after a Cinco de Mayo outing for current and former staff that Esty said Julie Sweet, a former chief of staff, alerted her that Baker called Kain about 50 times and left threatening messages.

“The next day, I confronted him about this and said, ‘This is completely unacceptable,’ ” Esty said. “He did not deny that this happened. He was contrite. I told him he had to get anger management and basically stop drinking.”

Esty said she turned to Joseph Sandler, a former in-house general counsel for the Democratic National Committee, who advised her to conduct an internal investigation that was led by Sweet and another unidentified member of her staff.

“It seemed to me like it was so shocking and it didn’t comport with anything else I had seen in his behavior,” Esty said. “It was all new terrain for me to figure out what I needed to do. I was concerned about all of my staff’s welfare and her safety.”

Esty said the investigation revealed a pattern of female staffers “feeling threatened, feeling verbally abused” by Baker. One altercation between Baker and Kain took place in Esty’s office in the Cannon Building in the winter of 2014, according to the congresswoman, who said she was not present at the time.

“She then reported as part of the investigation that he had threatened that if she reported to him to me or the employment counsel that he would make sure that she would never get another job,” Esty said. “She felt afraid. Other people felt afraid. I have been baffled and tortured by how could this have happened.”

Esty said she could not provide a copy of the internal investigation report because it would compromise the confidentiality of other employees who were interviewed.

As part of the termination protocol, Esty said, she and Baker were required to enter into a nondisclosure agreement.

The apology from Esty comes amid a flurry of sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations that have shaken both Hollywood and Washington. Esty and others have called for a major overhaul of how Congress investigates those allegations and she reiterated that belief Thursday.

The top Republican female office holder in Connecticut’s legislature had little sympathy for Esty.

“All I have heard from Democrat women this year is that they are the party to protect women,” said House GOP Leader Themis Klarides of Derby. “This is clearly an example of someone who is full of excuses and failed to protect a woman when she needed help. Every step along the way there was an excuse.”

In November, after the House passed a resolution requiring sexual harassment training for all members and staff, Esty said: “For too long, the culture in Washington has accepted entirely unacceptable behavior. That needs to change — period.”

Romano said Esty’s calls now ring hollow.

“She paid this guy off,” he said. “You helped him find another job? You put other women in jeopardy? It shows a complete lack of character — that her cries of feminism and #MeToo are bogus.”

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Ariella Botts, 5, of East Hartford, was born with a severe muscular disorder called nemaline myopathy that requires round the clock care from a visiting nurse. Her mother, Rachel, talks about how the service is threatened by a state cutback that would lower the reimbursement from Medicaid. Without the visiting nurses, like Livia Brown, seen caring for Ariella, she would be in a medical foster home or a hospital or long-term care facility, probably at higher cost.

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Ariella Botts, 5, of East Hartford, was born with a severe muscular disorder called nemaline myopathy that requires round the clock care from a visiting nurse. Her mother, Rachel, talks about how the service is threatened by a state cutback that would lower the reimbursement from Medicaid. Without the visiting nurses, like Livia Brown, seen caring for Ariella, she would be in a medical foster home or a hospital or long-term care facility, probably at higher cost.

Ariella Botts, 5, of East Hartford, was born with a severe muscular disorder called nemaline myopathy that requires round the clock care from a visiting nurse. Her mother, Rachel, talks about how the service is threatened by a state cutback that would lower the reimbursement from Medicaid. Without the visiting nurses, like Livia Brown, seen caring for Ariella, she would be in a medical foster home or a hospital or long-term care facility, probably at higher cost.

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